A freely composed or improvised piece, usually for the organ in the context of a church service. The term is occasionally met with outside the church, as for example when Burney extemporized at the harpsichord before a distinguished audience in Venice: ‘I played a Voluntary, for I could neither see, nor remember anything, I was so frightened’ (Dr Burney's Musical Tours in Europe, ed. P.A. Scholes, London, 1959, i, p.135). In his remarks about improvisation Roger North discussed the aptitudes necessary in an organist who would create such a piece and the chief characteristics of the style. In the Anglican church the voluntary has been played at the Offertory (at which point before the Commonwealth the choral part of the Communion service often ended) and after the psalms or the second lesson at Matins and Evensong, as well as before and after the service, as is usual today.
As a musical term the word ‘voluntary’ is imprecise. At various times it has overlapped with ‘verse’, ‘fancy’ and ‘fugue’ as well as with less frequently used terms. The word ‘verse’, indicating a short organ piece, is derived from the custom whereby the organ provided a substitute for the chant in the Latin rite, playing the odd-numbered verses of a hymn or other item in alternation with the choir (see Organ hymn). There is no necessary formal distinction between the voluntaries and verses of Thomas Tomkins and John Blow, for example, although ‘voluntary’ was generally adopted for works in two or more sections. ‘Fancy’ is an anglicization of the Italian ‘fantasia’; it too was used by Tomkins interchangeably with voluntary and ‘verse’. The word ‘fugue’ (or ‘fuge’) is found in copies of some works of Blow and his contemporaries. They are of course fugal in character; but they are highly irregular, and the term, then and later, did not exclude the possibility of an independent prelude (the expression ‘prelude and fugue’ seems to have been unknown). The word appears on the title-pages of publications by Philip Hart (1704), Thomas Roseingrave (1728, 1750), Handel (1735), Burney (c1790) and others, sometimes as an alternative to ‘voluntary’.
The first piece to be called a ‘voluntary’ is a short movement in the Mulliner Book (c1550–75) by Richard Alwood (MB, i, 1966, no.17). It is freely composed and semifugal in style; but it is not unique in these respects. An untitled piece in a contemporary manuscript (GB-Och 1034A) by John Ambrose, for example, displays similar characteristics. From the so-called golden age of English keyboard music we may cite Byrd and Weelkes, as well as Tomkins, as composers of voluntaries in a fugal style. Gibbons preferred the term ‘fantasia’ or ‘fancy’ and applied it to a work (MB, xx, 1962, no.7) in which the two manuals of the early 17th-century English organ were exploited, apparently for the first time. The main fugal entries are on the little (or ‘Chair’) organ; but from time to time an entry appears on the Great organ in the left hand and is developed rather in the manner of a solo on the division viol. Towards the end both hands play together on the Great. It is surprising that so few double voluntaries (as the form came to be known) have come down to us from the first half of the 17th century. The only other surviving examples are three by John Lugge and one by Richard Portman.
Matthew Locke published seven voluntaries in Melothesia (1673). No.7 is a double voluntary in which a solo for the right hand appears for the first time. Nos.2 and 3 are introductions and fugues, the introduction itself being fugal in the latter. Most of Blow's voluntaries are slow or quick fugues. Purcell's voluntaries in G major and D minor both end with fast italianate fugal movements, the first after a rhapsodic introduction, the second after a slow fugue and a free middle section. The voluntary on the ‘Old Hundredth’ by Blow or Purcell is an unusual English example of chorale variation.
William Croft's 13 voluntaries are more straightforward in rhythm and texture than those of some of his contemporaries, such as Barrett and Hart. Roseingrave represents a continuation of Hart's idiom modified by a certain Handelian influence, while Croft's manner was perpetuated by Greene and Stanley. Greene established the form of the slow introduction followed by an Allegro which was either fugal or in concerto style (his published voluntaries have also been attributed to Boyce, but this is unlikely: Boyce himself composed a distinguished set, published posthumously). The majority of 18th-century voluntaries are in two movements, but many are in four, while Stanley contributed a three-movement work (op.5 no.8) in Italian concerto style. Among other 18th-century composers the names of Travers, Bennett, Walond, Burney, John Alcock the elder and Dupuis stand out. Early 19th-century composers include William Russell, Samuel Wesley and Thomas Adams. The term has often been used since then, but with no special implication beyond that of suitability for service use.
R. North: ‘The Excellent Art of Voluntary’, Roger North on Music, ed. J. Wilson (London, 1959), 133–45
J. Caldwell: English Keyboard Music before the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1973/R)
F. Routh: Early English Organ Music from the Middle Ages to 1837 (London, 1973)
N. Temperley: The Music of the English Parish Church (Cambridge, 1979)
B. Cooper: English Solo Keyboard Music of the Middle and Late Baroque (New York, 1989)
G. Cox: Organ Music in Restoration England: a Study of Sources, Styles, and Influences (New York, 1989)
JOHN CALDWELL